Has Google Changed As A Company?

A WebmasterWorld thread has conversation around an old post from a former Googler who talked about why he left Google after so many years.

His post is named Why I Left Google and he explains basically that since Larry Page took over the company and made the company about Google+, the focus and spirit of the company has changed.

He wrote:

Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the “old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”

Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn’t enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction.

It goes on and on, but hits it with:

Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.

The folks at WebmasterWorld are having a field day with this, as they should. Everyone, including those outside the company, feel the change in the company. But only insiders who have been there for years really feel it at this level.